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Got to visit the headquarters of the American Orchid Society today. Their greenhouses and gardens are spectacular. If anyone reading this ever visits Boca Raton, Florida, don't miss it, it's an olfactory wonder.
I didn't know orchids had so many intoxicating perfumes, and some that are, well, interesting. Several had sweet, powdery, spicy scents. Others smelled strangely like antique roses. One huge purple orchid smelled, well, purple. Its sillage was immense. Other orchids looked like alien
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Rose absolute and rose attars are among the most expensive and ubiquitous ingredients in perfumery, along with jasmine and orris, ambergris and oudh. The vast majority of mainstream and niche fragrances don't use naturals for these notes anymore, and haven't for at least a decade. There are many aromachemicals used to mimic rose absolute, but the one I like the best is by Givaudan, titled simply, "Rose".
But does Rose smell like a rose? Well, more like a hyper-rose. If naturals
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Cananga odorata is one of the great floral staples of perfumery. The name ylang-ylang comes from Tagalog, and probably derives from “ilang-ilan”, meaning "rare”. Ylang ylang hails from the Philippines and Indonesia, and is also grown extensively in Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. In the Philippines, its flowers, together with the flowers of the sampaquita, or jasmine sambac, are strung into necklaces. It was the primary scent of macassar oil, which gentlemen of the Victorian period used
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Lately, more attention is being paid to those trees and plants that are succumbing to over-harvesting, climate change, and land use change. Aloeswood and white sandalwood are pre-eminent on this list of endangered trees, but a number of the frankincense-bearing trees (Boswellia) are now on the list, and Atlas Cedar (Cedrus atlantica) may soon join them. Atlas Cedar, a staple of fine perfumery and made so famous by Serge Lutens
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